Useful WordPress plugins

Sandalsand is using WordPress as a blogging platform and content management system – and so are 60 million websites across the globe.

This post was first published on 18. October 2014 and is being updated with the latest developments. The latest as of November 2017.

WordPress is a versatile platform capable of handling just about anything you like. This is largely due to its free and open source technical base and not least the variety of themes and plugins available for integration.

Over the last years I have tried other plugins as well. Some ran into conflict with other plugins and had to be deleted, others did not deliver on their promises, and some were not updated by their makers and produced a future compatibility risk for the websites. Obviously some plugins come and go, others become so essential to running your blog or website that you will run into serious trouble if you deactivate or delete them.

Are you looking for a free Instagram feed plugin for WordPress ? Do you want to show Instagram posts, photos and images on your WordPress website? Do you want a simple integration, responsive Instagram gallery, beautiful and custom-styled feeds?

Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.

A number of possibilities. I'm using only a few, like handling comments, a Twitter timeline and statistics.

The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

Optimising database by using caching. The most recommended plugin ever.